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ST – GameChat: Split Squad Games vs Phillies & @ Yankees

The Twins are playing two games today… one group making the trip to Tampa to face the Evil Empire and the other group defending the fort (Fort Myers, to be exact) against the visiting Phillies.

The Phillies/Twins game is on the radio in the Cities (1500). But guess what… you know how Twins games on TV have been tough to come by this spring? Well BOTH games… with identical 12:05 CT starting times (though the Phillie game has been delayed to 12:15 due to a late-arriving Phillie TV truck)… are being televised today on MLB.tv, but neither is on FSN.

I’ll post lineups as they get published and will be putting up a GameChat before the actual game time. I mess it up, blame Babs… she’s the one who left town and left me to do this stuff! – JC

Some impressive performances among the crew that went to Tampa to face the Yankees. NY put their A+ lineup on the field, but then let our old BitchSox friend, Freddy Garcia, do their pitching. The Twins beat up Garcia a bit, while Twins pitchers largely shut down that Yankee lineup. Scott Baker gave up a long HR to CF off of ARoid in the first inning, but otherwise had a good 4 innings, only giving up one other hit. Matt Capps and Glen Perkins threw good innings, as well. Denard Span had 3 hits and Luke Hughes kept up his torrid hitting with a couple more hits, too.

The Phillie lineup that visited Ft Myers didn’t have much firepower in it, but beat the Twins 6-3. More accurately, they beat Joe Nathan 6-3. All six runs came off of Joe. After Ben Revere lost a flyball in the sun to start Nathan’s inning, all hell broke loose. Nathan gave up 6 ERs, on 5 hits, including 1HR and a BB in just 1/3 of an inning pitched. Ouch. Virtually no offensive performances worth mentioning, but Ben Revere did make another nice diving catch, this time coming in hard from CF. Francisco Liriano got through 3 IP, without giving up a run, but he did give up 4 hits and 2 BB, to go with his 2 Ks. Better than his last outing but still needs to keep improving. Jose Mijares, Kyle Gibson, Eric Hacker and Yoman Bazardo all pitched well, however.

The first round of cuts will be made tomorrow. Look for a lot of the pitchers who threw today to be sent to the minor league camp. Bazardo, Hacker, Gibson, Guerra, Bromberg and Swarzak could all be among the first cuts as the Major League pitchers are getting more innings to stretch out their arms and these guys will need to get their innings on the minor league side if they’re going to be ready to be starting pitchers for Rochester and New Britain. Likewise, some of the younger catchers will be candidates to get sent down, though with Joe Mauer not catching games yet, one or two may stick around a while longer than they normally would.